MAY 18

2026

Monday: woke up early, ate breakfast, did a little workout, probably should have spent more time looking at my documents, and spent too much time trying to figure out how to use the internet archive website downloader (unsuccessfully). Ended up logging in minutes before my shift started. At least I was able to get pretty well caught up this week? I took another shower after work, as temperatures are spiking here, and even with the air back on, I was sweating a lot. Not a ton of people at the bar tonight; after asking the waitress about which drinks counted for their "well cocktails" Happy Hour promo, I ordered a rum and cola... which she later clarified didn't actually count for the promo, so why did I bother asking? If all we can afford to do is order beers, I may as well just stick wtih the water. The trivia rounds felt like they were going well, thanks in part to a larger-than-usual number of game-related questions, but we gave up a few more points than we could afford to, and we ended up in 4th. Still didn't make it out of the restaurant until after 9 PM, but the ice cream shop was open late thanks to the hot weather. Julie got her soft-serve swirl (larger than she expected), while I ordered a mint chocolate chip with chocolate shavings. Indulgent, but we'll make up for it with 8-Minute Abs tomorrow night after Julie returns from her dinner. Second week in a row of not being at Santucci's, unfortunately.

After treating the cats, I logged back into work to try to clear out pending DSB groups before they turn into reworks, to limited success; John kept hassling me. As soon as midnight approached, I shut down, but I was still pretty invested in my music and I had Goose on top of me, so I swapped devices to my PC, where I indulged my desire to read old tumblr entries. I have to get better at enduring the discomfort and shame of my past mistakes.

2025

Sunday: after waking up, I tried to work on an interactive fiction project using the Kinopio mind-mapping service, but my project soon proved too complicated for the browser-based service to handle without slowing to a crawl. I migrated all the data into a Google Sheet instead. I didn't realize how long I'd spent on this, because Julie asked whether we should have lunch before our walk; I was still expecting to make myself breakfast. I agreed that we should eat, and I reheated my chicken sandwich from the restaurant yesterday. Still pretty spicy, but not bad when reheated. While I ate, I started watching Pat and Paige's Delta Rune replay stream in anticipation of the third chapter coming out next month.

Once we'd both eaten and dressed, we set out on our weekly walk to PetSmart. We took essentially the opposite route we took last week: we walked up Juniper followed by 12th St. At Washington, we looked to see if our sunbather was out again, but perhaps the day wasn't sunny enough. (Regardless, the weather was wonderful. We enjoyed being outside.) At the store, we could only get a couple of the cheese-flavored lickable spoons, but we got another jar of the Churu chicken slurries. It was another long wait at the register. On our way back home, we walked up to 18th this time, and we walked as far south as Moore. Lots of people on the streets today.

Back home, we got cleaned up from our walk and treated the cats. Today's premiere stream was a playthrough of The Little Match Girl against the Universal Sisterhood of Naughty Little Girls. I spent a little bit of time playing Hearthstone until 5 PM.

Since it takes me a little bit longer to make the chicken meatballs I was preparing for dinner, I decided I'd better make dinner tonight rather than on a work day. Things that went well: using the broiler for the asparagus, using the big flat skillet for the marinara and the meatballs, estimating most of the ingredient measurements, overall sequencing of the pasta water/asparagus/simmering sauce/meatball construction. Things that went poorly: the breadcrumb mixture as described by the recipe is nothing but a bowlful of powder, which is invariably scorched in the oven. This would almost work better as a brushed-on oil, assuming it wouldn't be a problem on the cheese which is usually already melting due to the heat of the meatballs. I had to scrape off a small portion of the applied breadcrumb mixture which got too burned, but otherwise this was pretty good.

While I ate, I played some Blue Prince, in which I finally got past a big bottleneck which had been limiting my progress toward the optional endgame. I stopped playing just before Ryan started a stream in which he reacquainted himself with the code he made for the combat system in his upcoming Little Match Girl game. During the latter part of that stream, I started writing this update on my other screen, which I have just now completed.

2024

Saturday: my work week resumed today. I'd been thorough with my projects on Wednesday, so most of the day was focused on chat support and catching up on emails. (I woke up early enough to do a little MoP Remix leveling in, since I wanted to see how evoker handled an actual leveling process, and I got into the parts of Jade Forest that I actually enjoy going through.) During my breaks at work, I watched more Shadowbringers content on streams. Julie got invited out the Italian Festival with her bocce friends, and we had leftover goulash for dinner. Sleep was creeping up on me again, so I went to bed early.

2023

Thursday: work's feeling a little better than the first half of the week. I think I may have run to the store before work today? Maybe it was Friday. Anyway, I played more Zelda after work, but the summary of everything I've done lately is rolled up in my May 20 update.